Previous studies have stressed that in ation dynamics exhibit a substantial disper- sion across sectors. Using US producer price data, we present evidence that sectoral in ation persistence is negatively correlated with market concentration, which is diffi- cult to reconcile with the prediction...

Real exchange rates are highly volatile and persistent. I provide a novel structural explanation for these facts using a model with dispersed information among firms. When producers face strategic complementarities in price-setting, uncertainty about competitors' beliefs results in sluggish...

This paper decomposes price into its 2 major constituents, namely markup (Mkp) and marginal cost (MC) with which a Markov-switching VAR with fixed transition probabilities is estimated. Since the proposed pair of variables has not been extensively analysed, a theoretical model that derives...

How does the sensitivity of prices to public information changes along a production chain? We examine this question in a setting where prices in a stage affect the cost of next stage firms and also contain information about the unobserved state of the economy. Our results depend on the...

This paper proposes an approximate solution of firm's optimal inattentive length in a standard macroeconomic model. The approximate solution conceptually fits a sticky-information model better, and predicts empirically more plausible inattentive length than the one proposed by Reis (2006)

In models of monetary policy, discretionary policymaking often lacks the ability to manage public beliefs, which explains the theoretical appeal of policy rules and commitment strategies. But as shown in this paper, when a policymaker possesses private information, belief management becomes an...

We study optimal nominal demand policy in an economy with monopolistic competition and flexible prices when firms have imperfect common knowledge about the shocks hitting the economy. Parametrizing firms' information imperfections by a (Shannon) capacity parameter that constrains the amount of...

Monetary policy is most effective when public beliefs about future policies are actively managed. This is the appeal of policy rules and commitment strategies, typically absent under discretion. But when a policymaker has some private information - as is the case in reality - belief management...

This paper examines the impact of public information in an economy where agents also have diverse private information. Since disclosures by central banks are an important source of public information, we are able to assess how the words of central bankers shape expectations, in addition to their...

This paper develops an algorithm that enables to solve macroeconomic models with Rotemberg pricing and imperfect common knowledge. Under the concept of imperfect common knowledge, Rotemberg pricing requires the solution algorithm to take prices explicitly into account. The state space includes...